Sony’s MiniDisc is going gentle into that good night, has somehow survived this long

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Some of you may remember Sony’s MiniDisc player — the company’s early ’90s attempt at a non-CD media storage medium around the time that CDs were becoming quite popular. The rest of you might look at the above image and wonder why that UMD is shaped like a square and sticking out of something that isn’t a PSP. Sony has a history of creating new storage mediums, from Betamax, to UMDs, to Blu-rays, but along the way, the MiniDisc — a small optical 1GB disc kept safe within a square casing — was released into the world and promptly forgotten. Those of you who do remember the MiniDisc might be surprised to learn that Sony is still shipping a MiniDisc player — until next month, that is, as the MiniDis will officially be put to bed.

Sony stopped production of the units back in September of 2011, but now, as of March 2013, Sony will ship its last player. Somehow, even though most of us have probably never even held a MiniDisc player — much less listened to music on or owned one — the little guy managed to survive 21 years since its launch in 1992. This is a difficult feat for any propriety piece of technology, especially one in the music industry, where much more convenient and trendy devices — such as iPods and phones — and cheaper alternatives — such as CDs, paid digital downloads, or piracy — have had significant impact on the scene.

If you tend to desire weird, obscure tech after its lifecycle has run its course, you can head on over to Amazon or eBay to try to snag a MiniDisc player, most of which are a little too expensive even for what might now be considered a “collector item.”